OK the back story is: Brought a SEALED copy of Win7 Ultimate back in November on Ebay (yea I know, stupid move), and until this morning everything was great. I Emailed 'MS' and posted on the help forums. What I got back from the forums was interesting. Seems I may of been sold a MSDN key that got blacklisted. I can either shell out another £150 for another copy of Windows or I can reach out to the Linux users here to advise me on the best version to get. One that has the look and feel of Windows and can run windows software via Wine. I have VERY LIMITED/NO experience with Linux, so any advice would be great, opinions are welcomed. Links too please, to save me going to 100+ sites in Google In as short a list as I can, I would be looking for the following support in a Linux distro... All major Audio/video/subtitle codec's (inc MKV/AAC/FLAC/OGG/XVID etc) Zip/rar/7z support Flash (I guess) Steam Torrent app Support for microsoft products (office) So I won't have to redo any documents I may have in Microsoft formats (word/exel) Oh more important then anything, I will need a distro that can read/write, support AND install to Fat32/NTFS partitions as I don't like the sound of the Linux partition system, and I don't want to loose data if I'm forced to convert the hard-drives. I have the whole weekend to look into this, but if anyone can help me get the ball rolling it would be great. I'll check in after work. Many thanks in advance guys.
Ubuntu should be just fine for you, I'd think. LibreOffice supports all Microsoft Office formats, also.
Microsoft Office 2007 is perfect through WINE too. Same goes with Steam and a lot of titles like the Source-based Games. Ubuntu is a great start for Linux. But personally I'd give Linux Mint 10 a spin, it's based off ubuntu but they're interface is a lot more basic and Windows-like.
Are you using 32bit or 64bit version? I will get you a key from my MSDN account. Sadly I can't guaranty that the key will be accepted as I have used them a couple of times before myself but can't see the harm in trying.
Mmkay, everyday Linux user here, so I'll see what I can answer. My responses are in bold+italics, and they're relevant to Ubuntu, which has been the easiest to use and setup [at least for me]. Keep in mind that, you might want to still look into getting that Windows key if you need a lot of Windows apps. Wine isn't perfect, and even though I can at least trust it to run most of the random programs and utilities I download, there is still a LOT of stuff that is broken. Hope this helps. Cheers!
Just use an activation hack for your copy of win7. You'll be off much easier than trying to figure out how Linux works.
With regards to the FAT/NTFS: You can't run Linux on a FAT or NTFS partition — FAT and NTFS were not designed for Unix. However, you can read/write FAT out of the box, and you will have STABLE (at last) support for NTFS if you install ntfs-3g. Bootloaders are completely different. Most Linux setup systems nowadays handle the bootloader for you. As long as you don't DELETE the Windows partition, though, you can always use the Windows install disc to restore its bootloader and, for instance, the Knoppix or Ubuntu Live CD to install grub.
I was SURE I had posted here before... Anyway, Linux Mint has all of those, but for Steam you need WINE which may or may not work. You can't install Linux (or anything Unix-like/based) on FAT32/NTFS. FAT32 doesn't support permissions at all. And NTFS doesn't support unix permissions that are needed. With Linux Mint you can, though, have write/read access to FAT32 and NTFS partitions. I haven't tried LibreOffice, I hated OpenOffice though.
WINE will suffice for Steam, OpenOffice...Never really liked it, but no one's stopping you from running Office on WINE anyway. Flash, zip, rar/unrar, 7zip all work on Linux (7zip requires the p7zip or 7za package). Torrent apps, you have a lot to choose from, KTorrent, Deluge, Transmission, etc. If you want a Windows-like UI, I'd go with KDE. FAT32 is stable, and NTFS-3G enables NTFS read/write support. Unfortunately Linux installs to neither of those (FAT lacks permissions, and NTFS lacks UNIX permissions) but you can always partition your hard drive to have an NTFS partition where all your files are stored, and an ext4 partition where Linux is installed. Though I have to say, WINE isn't perfect.
A word of warning if you would be interested KDE with the Kubuntu distro, apparently the KDE side is poorly maintained by the Kubuntu team. Linux Mint KDE Edition might be a lot better as it's a "Community Edition" where someone is actually spending time to make it as good to the original Mint as much as possible.
Linux dropped support for installing to FAT32 (through umsdos) a very long time ago because people weren't interested in it anymore, and nobody was willing to maintain the code for it. And quite frankly, there's nothing bad about ext4 (the most commonly used Linux filesystem now). In fact, it's better than most filesystems because it is much more lower maintenance than NTFS and FAT32 thanks to the inode based journaling filesystem.
I would recommend Linux Mint. It's got pretty much everything you asked for. I wouldn't worry about the partitioning. Just give the installer space to make an ext4 partition itself, and then store all your files over on the NTFS partition.
I use Mint and I can't get Office to run properly or Portal to load the menu (Goes all buggy). I blame my hardware though, but that shouldn't have an effect on Office. Also my PS portable ceased to function (when I open fonts it crashes) Linux is not all as it seems. I find myself having to wipe and start again from time to time.
Photoshop CS4 portable crashes on me all of the time in WINE, so I usually have to end up loading Windows 7 for photoshopping. I agree with Linux being a problem with wiping, but it's worse when your ext4 partition is part-corrupted.
